This is a proposal to study the distribution of schooling among various social groups and the extent to which educational attainment contributed to social mobility in the American past. It will deal primarily with elementary and secondary education and focus especially on the lower part of the social hierarchy. The period 1880-1925 encompasses a substantial increase in the amount of education the average American city dweller received. It will thus be possible to focus on the relationship between education and mobility before, and at several points during, this period of increasing schooling. This study extends the questions of the relevant sociological literature, in appropriately modified form, to an earlier period. It examines the extent to which the variables of socioeconomic origins, ethnicity, family structure and sex were related to educational attainment; and the extent to which each of these variables -- as well as length of schooling, type of school or academic program, and performance -- were related to career attainments. In its methods the research may be seen as an extension of the social history studies of recent years to include the variable of education. Samples of individuals reaching high school age will be selected from manuscript census schedules and other records, traced to school records and traced forward in time to city directories and tax books, which indicate their occupation and property holdings in later life.